“Just on the periphery, sweetie. Just around the edges.”
Except that was bullshit, because the more he talked, the more I realized how deep he was.
“They just needed a document. One tiny little document.”
“What kind?”
“A will. A holographic will, they call it. Handwritten, that means.”
“I know what it means, Daddy,” I snapped. “Keep going.”
He did, and it kept getting worse and worse and worse. Apparently one Frederick Charles intended to leave three hundred acres of prime Atlantic City property to his niece, Marjorie Calloway. And that would do Muratti no good.
The living Frederick wouldn’t negotiate with Muratti, believing him to be a no-good mafia prick. But a dead Frederick couldn’t argue if his will showed that he’d changed his mind about dear Marjorie and decided to leave the property to a distant cousin who just so happened to be neck deep in gambling debts to Muratti. And who would, in settlement thereof, sign over the land.
Muratti, of course, would seed the land with casinos that would grow into thriving money trees.
“They’re going to kill the old man,” I said after he’d told me all of that. “As soon as the will is forged, they’ll take him out.” I met my father’s eyes. “You got mixed up in a deal where someone is going to end up dead.”
He’d gone completely pale. “I didn’t know, Kitty Cat. I swear I didn’t know.”
I believed him. My dad had the stomach for a lot of things, but killing people wasn’t one of them.
“You couldn’t forge your way out of a paper bag,” I told my father. “Who are you working with?”
“That’s the thing,” he said. “I lined up Wesley. You remember him?”
“Sure. How is he?” Wesley had mad skills—and what cemented him in my childhood memory was a seemingly endless supply of Tootsie Pops. I’d adored him.
“Passed away,” Daddy said. “The big C.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, it was a pisser.”
“But if he’s dead, he can’t do the job. So what’s the problem?” I asked, then turned right around and answered my own question. “Jesus, Dad. You were going to screw Wesley?”
“Not screw him,” my dad said indignantly. “His share was going to be perfectly reasonable. But I’d found the deal and I’d brought him in. I was taking all the risk. Gotta be some compensation for doing the legwork.”
“You’re taking all the risk, all right. Now that Wesley’s dead and you can’t make the deal happen, Muratti’s going to want his pound of flesh. Christ, Daddy,” I said, as I stood and started to pace. “Do you know what the mafia does to men who can’t deliver what they promised?”
“Why do you think I came here? They didn’t follow me,” he rushed to say. “I’m sure of it. And no one knows who you are. We buried that connection long ago. They won’t find me. How the hell could they find me?”
I hugged myself, numb with fear. “They’ll find you because they’ll never stop looking.”
“But Charles will eventually die, and the property will go to his niece, and then that will be that. Muratti will move on and I can come out of hiding.”
“Hiding,” I repeated. “That’s what you’re doing here?”
He didn’t answer.
“No,” I said sadly. “You’re not hiding. You came here looking for me to find someone to take Wesley’s place. You know as well as I do that a man like Muratti has a long memory.”
“Just one document, Catalina. Surely you know someone who can do just one document.”
“I’m out of the game, Daddy. Mostly, anyway,” I amended. “And I haven’t pulled an art con since Florida. I don’t have the connections,” I lied, because the truth was that I knew one person who could pull this off. But if I asked him, I’d have to tell him the truth about everything. And I wasn’t sure I was ready to do that.
I ran my fingers through my hair again.